Michael Winship: Corporate America’s Sunshine Patriots

Republicans keep telling us these corporations and their rich executives need every last one of their outlandish tax breaks because they’re job creators! Yeah, right.

Michael Winship

We went to Mount Vernon in Virginia a few weeks ago. It was the first time I’d been to George Washington’s family estate since a whirlwind day tour of Washington, D.C., when I was a high school freshman. Our guide then was a fast-talking cabdriver who interlaced his rapid-fire wisecracks with an impressive command of facts and figures, many of which may even have been correct.

Today, the Washington plantation, once in sorry shape, has been beautifully restored, from mansion to slave quarters. At two, state-of-the-art visitor and education centers, sightseers can learn all about the great man’s life and times, including a sound and light presentation on battles of the American Revolution that features howling wind and falling “snowflakes” — tiny bits of soapsuds pumped into the theater — when Washington crosses the Delaware.

The whole thing isn’t run by the National Park Service, as you might have expected, but by a private, non-profit organization, the genteelly named Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA), which raises money from ticket sales, food, souvenirs and money from individuals, foundations and corporations.

A lot of money. According to the MVLA’s most recent annual report, “In 2010, 47,242 individuals, corporations, and foundations contributed more than $17 million to the Mount Vernon cause.” With George Washington a favored Founding Father of the American right, no small amount of those funds have come from such conservative contributors as the Heritage Foundation, the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, the Mars family of candy bar fame, and newspaper publisher Richard Mellon Scaife.

A quick perusal of Mt. Vernon’s annual report reveals that its many corporate funders include the Ford Motor Company, Toyota, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, Altria (formerly Philip Morris), Coca Cola, the American Gas Association, PricewaterhouseCoopers, M&T Bank, Stanley Black & Decker and BAE Systems, the massive, British-based defense contractor that last year pled guilty to criminal charges related to bribery allegations and paid almost $450 million in penalties to the United States and Great Britain. (Wonder what the George Washington of slaughtered cherry tree and “I cannot tell a lie” fame would make of that?)

In fairness, they all have helped preserve a beautiful historic landmark, but as I looked at their names, I couldn’t help but think that they and their big business colleagues could perform an even greater patriotic service to America by working to create more jobs.

Naïve? Not really. After all, as of last week, as per the website Zero Hedge and data analysts Capital IQ, 29 public companies — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GE and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — each have more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury. So why not make a sacrifice bigger than a nice hefty grant to Mount Vernon or the historic location of your choice and commit instead to finding employment for at least some of the 14.1 million out of work? After all, the Republicans keep telling us these corporations and their rich executives and stockholders need every last one of their outlandish tax breaks because they’re job creators!

Yeah, right. In May, when Fortune magazine released this year’s list of America’s top 500 companies, its editors wrote, “The Fortune 500 generated nearly $10.8 trillion in total revenues last year, up 10.5 percent. Total profits soared 81 percent. But guess who didn’t benefit much from this giant wave of cash? Millions of U.S. workers stuck mired in a stagnant job market … we’ve rarely seen such a stark gulf between the fortunes of the 500 and those of ordinary Americans.”

And yet a recent headline on CNBC’s website reads, “Firms Have Record $800 Billion of Cash But Still Won’t Hire.” Maybe they’ve never heard the Bible’s exhortation that to whom much is given, much is expected, a sentiment well understood by George Washington, who gave up the life of a gentleman farmer — twice — to come to the aid of his fledgling nation.

Just a couple of days before Washington crossed the Delaware during that bleak Christmas of 1776, with real ice, wind and snow — no soap suds — Thomas Paine famously predicted that, “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.” Today’s corporate giants, blinded by greed, oblivious to the despair around them, are doing much the same. That can’t last.

Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos, president of the Writers Guild of America, and former senior writer of “Bill Moyers Journal” on PBS.

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